I tested Obsidian for my purposes, installed lots of plugins and tried lots of workflows (with and without dropbox and onedrive). Now I want a fresh start for my real data - removing my test data, the plugins I don’t need and reset everything else.
I tried creating a new vault and removing the plugins, but it still showed waiting for plugins previously installed.
Then I uninstalled the whole app and reinstalled it after a reboot, but it still tries to open vaults I already deleted and shows some plugin remnants.
I uninstalled again and hunted after common settings locations like program data and user data and deleted what I found there. Then reinstalled. I still get “ghost notes” (meaning they do not appear every time I open the app, and they have only the title, no content). On the other hand, the “daily notes” lose part of their content sometimes. It’s inconsistent.
I am sure it is a “me”-problem, don’t know how I messed up so badly, but I really want to use Obsidian. How can I get a completely fresh start?
I am on windows 11 and using the latest installer for Obsidian.
Can you show a screenshot of what and where you mean when you say it’s showing vaults you deleted?
If you created a new vault, there shouldn’t be any plugins in that vault.
Were you storing the vault in a cloud sync tool? And did you make your new vault have the same folder name as the old vault? And maybe the cloud tool is trying to put the notes back, from online storage? You said OneDrive and Dropbox, so I guess yes.
If it’s a cloud issue, the easiest suggestion might be to just use a new vault name. And then I can’t imagine how it would put any of the data back.
Unfortunately I didn’t think to make a screenshot before uninstalling yet again. There were notes with date titles (in one string, like 202504021105) which is why I suspect it has to do with daily notes. No content, just the title. I never used titles with that name scheme, they must come from some automatic action.
what and where you mean when you say it’s showing vaults you deleted?
When I clicked in the bottom left panel, where you can choose vaults, it showed the vaults from the old installation, which I had deleted before reinstalling. When opened they were empty (expected, because I deleted them), but they were there.
Were you storing the vault in a cloud sync tool?
I had some problems (vanishing notes) in the first installation using synced folders, so for the vault in the new installation I used a local-only directory. It was on a different drive, but had the same name (“obsidian”).
How did you delete the vault? From Obsidian, or from your OS?
Either way, that is strange. I just tried deleting a vault from the OS. And when I restarted Obsidian it had been removed from the list of vaults. I’m not sure what else to suggest.
Are you double sure it’s saved in a totally local folder, and not one that is synced in OneNote by default? And is there any chance you installed Obsidian in a OneDrive folder? (Not sure if that’s even possible.)
Side note: I would suggest not using the name “obsidian” or “vault” or anything generic for your vaults. Call it something descriptive, or at least slightly different. Mine is just “ObsidianNotes”. Just don’t make it a generic word you might accidentally mistake for an app folder. (Not just now, but months in the future when you forget.)